Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
Tuesdays with Story
March 2, 2015

She said it . . .

“Writing, you’re trapped in the alphabet, and you’ll be there until you die.” – Patricia Lockwood, poet (1982-)

Who’s up next . . .

March 4: **Yes, this is a new night, a Wednesday night!

Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapter 12, Coastie Girl), Pat Edwards (???), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Mike Rickey (poems), Millie Mader (chapter 61, Life on Hold), and Andy Brown (chapter, The Last Library).

March 10: ???

March 17: Lisa McDougal (chapter, Tebow Family Secret), Amber Boudreau (???), Bob Kralapp (???), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapter 13, Coastie Girl), Judith McNeil (???), and Jerry Peterson (chapters 11-13, Rooster’s Story).

Fifth Tuesday . . .

Yes, it’s only five weeks away, March 31 at Mystery To Me Bookstore. Do you have it on your calendar? Are you going to be with us? It’s a potluck event, so plan now for what you are going to bring for the feasting table. Second-and-fourth group hosts.

TWS alumna Susan Gloss Parsons is our special guest for that evening. She will share her experiences in getting her first novel published by Morrow.

A video game for writers . . .

As reported on WPR’s program To the Best of Our Knowledge, last Sunday, Elegy for a Dead World is a poetry writing video game. Go to the game’s website and you see it’s promoted as a fiction writing video game . . . although you can use it to write poetry if poetry is what rings your chimes.

The game designers take you to three dead worlds drawn from the poetry of Shelley, Byron, and Keats. A character walks along – really, you – observing the details of each world and occasionally stops. A writing prompt appears, and you type in on the screen your thoughts on what you’ve seen. By the time you finish your journey through the three worlds, you have a graphic novel.

Heck of an interesting concept with a neat payoff.

Now the game isn’t free. It costs $14.99 to download, but check it out. For the gamers among us, this may be one you want to get. Here’s the link: http://www.dejobaan.com/elegy/

How to handle multiple perspectives in a third person narrative . . .

This can drive a writer nuts . . . and, if the writer handles it poorly, can drive the reader crazy.

YA author Nathan Bransford took that on in a recent post. Here are his four tipes on how to do it right:

One of the biggest challenges with third person narratives is how to balance multiple perspectives.

This isn’t always something beginning writers give much thought. Third person is third person, right? Can’t you just jump from one character to another as you need to? Aren’t all-seeing perspectives essentially the same?

Nope.

Head jumping can be really confusing for a reader. It can be wildly disorienting to see three, four, five characters’ inner thoughts in succession. You stop feeling anchored in a scene and instead feel like you’re swimming through a thought explosion.

There are two main ways to solve this: sticking to third person limited (anchored to one character’s perspective) or third person omniscient (Gods-eye). But most novels deviate slightly from these strict categories and cheat from time to time.

Rather than telling you “rules” about omniscient vs. limited vs. hybrid, here are some directional tips that will hopefully help you keep the reader feeling anchored in a scene:

1) Consider separating a shift in perspective with chapter or scene breaks

This is the most straightforward approach to multiple perspectives in a third person limited narrative. Pick a character and stick with their perspective through a cohesive chapter or scene. This is how George R.R. Martin handles the Song of Fire and Ice books (aka Game of Thrones). The novels are anchored by several key characters per novel, and we see what is happening through their eyes.

2) If you’re going to break perspective within a scene, think of it as keeping a “camera” in place

Occasionally you might want to remove the narrating character and show something that is happening out of their view, whether in order to show the reader something the main character can’t see or because it just makes sense for them to bounce for a second.

Read the entire post at http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2015/02/4-tips-for-handling-multiple.html